Losing a loved one.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What happens when we die?
Death & what remains
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I fear the arrogance we are all at risk of, the pride that pushes us to put “I” in place of “God”. More prosaically, I fear physical pain because it risks stripping us of our dignity.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 November 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →
Gayle King
Broadcaster
I know we all have to die, but when my time comes, I’d rather it not be because a goose flew into the engine of a plane I’m on.
Losing my mind.
Failure. I hate losing, particularly at football and politics. I play five-a-side every week – middle of midfield, barking orders. Some people say it’s the taking part that counts. I am not in that camp. It’s the winning that counts.
More from Andrea Bocelli
View profile →Earthly life is merely the infancy of our soul. What comes after physical death is, I imagine, like returning home.
As a man who tried to respect everyone, treating them with a smile and with due regard, despite the limitations of being human.
When each of my three children was born.
As a young man I had a car accident on a foggy night that left the vehicle looking like a squashed box, even though, by some miracle, I walked away unscathed.
A singer. I wanted to live off music ever since I was a child – a wish that came true when I was over 35 years old.
The many nuns and priests who often work in the shadows, dedicating their lives to the service of others.
More on identity & self
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- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 195 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 158 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 111 answers
- What are you most proud of? 103 answers
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